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Hey, Bulldozer fans: if you’re regular readers of the site you may remember that we told you a few months back that AMD expects to see better performance for its FX chips in Windows 8, as the company claimed that Windows 7 didn’t handle simultaneous multithreading efficiently. Turns out they were right! Kind of. Windows 7 didn’t handle simultaneous multithreading efficiently, but you still might not see a performance jump in Windows 8 – because today, Microsoft released a hotfix to correct the problem and help Bulldozers run better on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
From the hotfix page: This article introduces an update that optimizes the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs that are used by Windows 7-based or Windows Server 2008 R2-based computers. Currently, the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs is slower than expected. This behavior occurs because the threading logic in Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2 is not optimized to use the Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) scheduling feature. This feature was introduced in the Bulldozer family of AMD CPUs.
So what will the hotfix improve? Again, the web page provides the answer. After you install this hotfix, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 fully support AMD Bulldozer CPUs. Therefore, the CPUs operate at the expected performance level.
So, if you have a Bulldozer CPU and a Windows 7 machine, what are you waiting for? Head over to the hotfix page and download the update now!
Comments are closed on this article
bautrey
December 17, 2011 at 2:22am
Microsoft took down the hotfix. "The code associated with this KB is incomplete and should not be used." Uh oh, and I have it on my system. I hope nothing bad happens.
sdunnin
December 15, 2011 at 9:58pm
Has anyone been able to get this yet, and if so how? I tried chatting with an MS customer service agent this evening and got this information
Agent: I do apologize however, for us to send the Hotfix that we need, we would need the help of our Professional Support team.
Agent: Please contact them at 800-936-4900 from Monday - Friday 6:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. Pacific Time.
Agent: They are handling concerns in processing request for the said Hotfix.I just want to download the hotfix and not sit on the phone forever.
limitbreaker
December 15, 2011 at 5:42pm
this is great news, it means i can upgrade my cpu when second gen bulldozer comes out without taking the METRO
bautrey
December 15, 2011 at 12:42pm
I have the hotfix applied on my computer and I have the FX-8150. I ran Cinebench 11.5 and there was no difference in score (5.82). What other benchmarks should I run?
Supall
December 15, 2011 at 11:21am
Will you guys redo the benchmarks because of this? Or shall I head onto Anandtech or TomsHardware for that?
Typo91
December 15, 2011 at 11:14am
I am sure the preformance gain is less than %1. Enless someone designes a benchmark that rapidly starts and stops thousands of threads.
I would love to see the day when a patch of some kind comes out, and magically preformance gains of 30% or more are realized.
Slurpy
December 15, 2011 at 6:28pm
You obviously weren't playing RAGE the first two weeks after launch.
(Smart decision, btw)
chart2006
December 15, 2011 at 11:01am
Will we see some new benchmarking and compare them to see performance gain margins?
